Increase Mather

Increase Mather (21 June 1639-23 August 1723) was an American Puritan minister who served as President of Harvard College from 1681 to 1701. He was the son of Richard Mather and the father of Cotton Mather.

Biography
Increase Mather was born in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639, the son of Puritan minister Richard Mather. Mather graduated from Harvard in 1656 and preached in the Commonwealth of England before the restoration of King Charles II of England to the throne in 1660, upon which Mather returned to the Americas. He took the helm of John Cotton's famed North Church of Boston in 1664 and, after his father's death in 1669, he wrote his father's biography and made his father a prophet by recounting his providential deliverance from the Great Hurricane of 1635. From 1681 to 1701, he served as President of Harvard College, and he was one of the leaders of the opposition to King James II of England's 1686 revocation of the colony's charter and the creation of the Dominion of New England. Mather died in 1723 at the age of 84.